There are many benefits to instilling emotions to computers, but there are also drawbacks. Automation anxiety has existed since the word computing first begun being used. Emotion recognition could lead to advanced surveillance, and the same technology that can manipulate our feelings could become a method of mass control.

Heart and The Machine is an exploration into how we’ll interact with computers that can understand our emotions.

The latest scientific findings indicate that emotions play an essential role in decision making, perception, learning, and more—that is, they influence the very mechanisms of rational thinking. Not only too much, but too little emotion can impair decision making. According to Rosalind Picard, if we want computers to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions.

Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent?

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman took a deep look into emotions and developed a new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind.